


Staring into the Abyss

by Sinelaborenihil



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, trigger warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:41:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26929822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinelaborenihil/pseuds/Sinelaborenihil
Summary: Saoirse Hawke is overwhelmed by all that has happened to her and as tensions escalate between mages and templars she finds herself contemplating taking her own life.
Relationships: Fenris/Female Hawke
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Staring into the Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> **TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDAL IDEATION & SUICIDE **
> 
> This is dark as hell, please, please, please don't read it if you are in a dark place. <3

Saoirse stared out at the moonlit water and let the salty breeze dry the tears on her cheeks. She wasn’t sure what had drawn her to this location, only that she needed to be outside of the city and away from the press of people. She had given so much trying to protect the people she loved, the city she now called home. But what had that gotten her? All of her family but Carver were dead, and she had no idea if she would ever see him again, or if he was even alive. Fenris had left her, despite all they had shared together. The Qunari had still devastated the city, despite the Arishok designating her Basalit-an. Defeating him in battle hadn’t done anything to mitigate the rubble and the dead buried beneath it. She had ruined everything she’d touched and yet people still looked to her for help or guidance. She even was now the Champion of Kirkwall. Champion of Fuckups, more like. Champion of Failing the People She Loved. Champion of Shit.  


She was so exhausted. Her body hurt. Her heart hurt. The prospect of waking up tomorrow and doing it all again was just...overwhelming.  


_They would all be better off without me anyway._  


Below her she could hear the water striking the rocky base of the cliff. The sound was soothing and it called to her. A few more steps, and you never have to feel any of this again. She took another step closer to the edge. She could just fall. Just let go. They would wonder what happened to her for awhile, but eventually they would forget. This was what should have happened after the Arishok. What would have happened, if they could have let her go. She had done enough. She deserved some peace.  


_A few more steps and you can rest._  


She heard Varric’s voice in her head. “Hawke, stop.” He sounded so sad, so scared. She hated to hurt him, but hurt at the beginning would surely save him whatever terrible pain she would eventually cause him.  


She took another step. She didn’t feel scared. She’d died once already. She knew that there was peace on the other side. Instead she just felt empty. Hollow. Maybe this was the Abyss that Flemmeth had spoken of. The dragon had said to jump.  


“Hawke!” Varric’s voice was more insistent now. It figured that his voice would be the one trying to keep her tied to this world. His voice had been one of the ones that brought her back last time.  


“I’m sorry, Varric,” she said quietly.  


She felt a warm hand clasp around hers firmly. “Stop.”  


Hawke gasped and jerked away, but the hand held fast. She found herself looking down into Varric’s eyes and when she saw the lines of worry between them the tears started to flow again.  


“Not like this, Hawke,” he said gently. “Don’t you dare.”  


“I...it isn’t what it looks like,” she said, swiping angrily at her tears.  


“Why are you lying to me?” he asked and he sounded so hurt that it took her breath away.  


She looked down at the ground, unable to meet his eyes. What could she possibly say?  


“Let’s go home, Hawke,” he said gently. “And talk.”  


“Just let me go, Varric,” she whispered. “Go home. Know that I love you.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he held her tightly.  


“You’re asking me to leave you here...so you can jump?” he asked her. His voice shook and she could feel the tremors in his hand too. “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you really think for one second that I would _go?_ ”  


She shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe it’d be better if you did.”  


He recoiled as if she’d struck him. “Stop it,” he said.  


“Just go,” she said bitterly. “Write a story of a better ‘Champion’ and let me go before I get you killed...or worse.”  


“I said, _stop it,”_ Varric said, his voice dangerously low. “I know what you’re doing, Hawke. But I’m not going anywhere. You can say whatever it is you need to say, but you’re stuck with me.”  


“The great ‘Champion’,” she snarled back at him. “The ‘Champion’, who couldn’t protect her baby sister and brother. Who couldn’t save her mother. The ‘Champion’, who lost the man she loved after one night.” She was crying again, but it didn’t matter. She had to make him understand how exhausted she was, how tired of the pain and loss. “I don’t want to fucking do this anymore!” she snarled. “I’m so fucking tired of trying when everything just turns to fucking ashes.” She jerked her hand away from him and took another step towards the edge of the cliff.  


“Fine,” he said bitterly, startling her. She saw him stride up to the cliff’s edge and look down. “Then do me a favor, Saoirse, and push me.”  


“What?” she hissed.  


“If you think that you’re leaving me to watch them fish your broken corpse out of the ocean, to tell our friends, to tell Fenris that I let you kill yourself…” he gave a bitter bark of laughter. “It’s not happening, Saoirse. I refuse to make your funeral arrangements. I refuse to watch you die _again_. So if you’re so hell-bent on suicide, well...you’re going to take me along with you.”  


“I can’t,” she said immediately. The thought of something happening to him made her stomach twist around on itself like a beheaded snake.  


“Why not?” he shot back at her. “At least it would be quicker. Because if you take nothing else away from this, Saoirse, take this. If you jump, you will be killing me just as surely as if you pushed me off right now.”  


She shook her head, trying to hold back the sobs that threatened to overwhelm her. “Varric...you don’t mean that.”  


“I do,” Varric said, looking away from her and out to sea. “You’re my best friend in this entire fucked-up world, Saoirse. You are a piece of my heart and I swear to you...if you jump, it will _break_ me.” 

He looked over at her and she saw the moonlight reflecting on the tears on his cheeks. “Thank the Maker I followed you out here,” he said quietly. “I like to think that I’m a strong man, Hawke, but if Aveline had come to tell me they’d found your body…” he shook his head and took a deep breath. “So...are we jumping?” he asked.  


She was sobbing openly by then and she had to reach for him. He stepped back from the edge and pulled her into a tight hug. “Saoirse, you have to stop doing this to yourself,” he said gently, stroking her back. “You take on all of this weight, and it’s breaking you.”  


“I’m sorry!” she managed to get out, tightening her arms around him.  


“I know, Sweetheart,” he said quietly. “Come on, let’s get you home.” His large, powerful hand wrapped around hers and he led her back through the winding trails and into the city. She let him lead her home and tuck her into bed.  


“I know I don’t have any right to ask,” she said, looking up at him. “But...will you stay with me tonight?”  


“That was never a question,” he replied, crawling into bed next to her and pulling her against him.  


She cuddled against his broad chest, and something about the comforting smell of his cedarwood soap mixed with the ever-present scent of the expensive ink he favored brought the tears again. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.  


“I know,” he said quietly. “I won’t lie to you and say that it’s all right, because you shook me up pretty badly tonight, Hawke. But...it will be all right,” he promised. “All of it will be all right.” She felt the rasp of his stubble against her forehead as he gave her a gentle kiss. “Now, go to sleep,” he said, tightening his arms around her. “We’ll talk in the morning.”  


****  


Varric managed to wait until her breathing had grown even before he let his tears fall. His stomach roiled and he found himself glad that he’d gotten so caught up in his work that he had forgotten to eat. Maker, he had come so close to losing her. He hugged her against himself tightly, wishing that he could follow her into unconsciousness. As it was, his active imagination was already spinning out how tonight could have ended.

 _“Varric!” Aveline’s voice shook him out of his sleep way too early in the morning and he groaned as he grudgingly shambled over and opened the door. He’d been about to make a joke about the hour, but then he saw her face._  


_“What is it?” he asked, the cold feeling of dread settling over him._  


_“We...a patrol found a body,” she said, her honest face miserable. “Varric...I think that it’s Hawke.”_  


_The shock struck him like a blow to the head and he found himself shaking his head hard. “I just saw her last night, Aveline. Where did you find…” it couldn’t be her, he wouldn’t accept it. “Where did you find it?”_  


_“At the base of a cliff on the Wounded Coast,” Aveline said. “It...it looks like she jumped, Varric. Can you think of anything that happened last night?”_  


_It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. Yes, she had seemed a little sadder the night before, but suicidal? Fuck...he’d let her leave because she’d told him she was ok. Hawke was always ok. He had let her walk away from him because she was always ok. “She seemed a little off,” he said. “But nothing to make me think that-that…” He looked up at Aveline. “Maybe it isn’t her.”_  


_Aveline didn’t say anything, just gestured for him to follow. In some ways, he wished that the walk to Anders’ clinic had never ended. Because as soon as he saw the broken body on the table, any hope he might have had disappeared. There was no doubting that cedar-colored skin, even bruised and blue and bloated by water. There was no doubting the remaining golden eye that stared blankly up through the glaze of death. There was no doubting the tight, closely cropped curls. It was Hawke._  


_And she was gone._  


_A horrible cry echoed through the clinic, and he realized belatedly that it was coming from him as he dropped to his knees and took her hand. It was so cold and stiff and nothing like her.  
_

_“No!” he begged her, pressing her hand to his forehead and willing her to squeeze back. “Hawke please...not like this. You can’t leave me like this!”_  


_But she had._  


_Hawke had left him as the executor of her estate. He was the one to make the arrangements. He was the one to watch Copper refuse to eat and hopefully check the door every time there were footsteps outside. He was the one to comfort Orana and Bodahn as they lamented the loss of their mistress. He was the one to tell Gamlen that he had no family left, but that Hawke had made sure he would never go hungry. He was the one to pass the final gifts on to each of her friends._  


_He told Fenris._  


_“You’re certain?” the elf had asked, his eyes wide. “There can be no doubt?”_  


_Varric shook his head._  


_“And Aveline...Anders...they think that she…” Fenris shook his head. “She wouldn’t...not like that.”He collapsed in front of his fireplace, where Varric realized that Hawke’s fire had finally gone out. “Hawke,” he whispered so brokenly that it drew a sob from Varric. "I never told her..."He had been expecting rage from Fenris. But he saw that the elf had been as broken as he himself was. It was worse than anger.  
_

_The funeral had been awful. Bleak. Lifeless. She would have hated it. She’d always said she wanted her funeral to be a party. But as her friends watched the fire consume her wrapped remains, it had been silent apart from sobbing. Her ashes were interred with her family and one day Copper had disappeared from the mansion. They’d found his body in front of her grave marker a few weeks later. He’d starved to death waiting for her to come back._  


_Their friends had dispersed from Kirkwall, leaving him alone with his quill and his parchment when he’d stopped returning any of their letters. He began to write the Tale of the Champion, losing himself in the stories of their adventures. Sometimes he could hear her laugh and almost feel the warmth of her hand on his shoulder. But memories faded, and he chased them desperately. He drank too much, slept too little, trying to preserve her on the page. And then one day he had scratched a new ending to her story. One where he’d walked her down the aisle so that she could marry Fenris, looking happy and free and blessedly alive. An ending where Varric had become a godfather to their children, teaching them to read and write and to love stories. An ending where they had all grown old together and he wasn’t a lonely, old drunk in his ramshackle rooms at the Hanged Man. He had sent the book to his publisher before beginning his last journey._  


_His walk to the Wounded Coast had taken him a long time. Bianca felt heavy in his shaking hands. His chest hair was gray and his faded doublet didn’t close over his alcohol-bloated belly. Still, he’d found the place where she’d died eventually. He could hear the waves that must have been the last thing she heard and strangely, it brought a smile to his face. Lovingly, he leaned Bianca against the tree that jutted over the water and bade her a fond farewell. Then, he stepped up to the edge and allowed himself to fall._

__

"Veata!" he told himself, sitting up and rubbing his temples. "Shit, Hawke." 

__

“Varric?”  


__

He glanced over and saw her lying on her side facing him, an inscrutable look on her face. “Promise me, Hawke, promise me that you will never make me live through...through _that_.”  


__

She hesitated and he felt an uncharacteristic spike of pure, wild rage. He grabbed her shoulders and saw her flinch.  


__

“Hawke!”  


__

“Aveline’s wedding is in a few weeks,” she said quietly. “I promise that I will be here for that.”  


__

He released her and staggered back away from her, shaking his head. He saw her rise from the bed and approach him and he held up his hand. “Don’t touch me,” he snarled. “Don’t-”  


__

“Please don’t make me promise forever,” she whispered and she sounded so tired and sad and normally it would have dulled the edge of his anger, but in that moment, he almost wanted to strike her. 

__

“I can’t promise forever, it’s too long, it’s too much, and I’m too tired. But I can promise you that I will be here for the wedding.”  


__

“That’s not good enough,” he spat. He saw her lying there. Felt her cold hands. Saw her lifeless eyes. He couldn’t take that.  


__

“What are you saying?” she asked, and she sounded utterly broken.  


__

“I’m saying that if you are just going to leave me...I can’t do this,” he said, holding up his hands and then letting them fall in a gesture of utter defeat. “I won’t.” He forced himself to meet her eyes. 

__

“Goodbye, Saoirse.”  


__

She gasped like she’d been struck, her mouth falling open. “Varric!”  


__

He shook his head and began to walk from her room, tears streaming down his face. He heard motion and then felt her hand on his shoulder and he spun around, grabbing her wrist. She let out a whimper of pain, but he didn’t let go. He was breathing hard as he looked up into her eyes. “I won’t,” he repeated. “I will follow you anywhere, Hawke. I will do whatever batshit idea you come up with. I will fight anyone and anything. I will go back to the Deep Roads. But I’ve watched you die once, Saoirse. I won’t do it again. Not like this. So you promise me that you will stay, no matter how tired you are. Promise me that you will fight like I know you can. You make me that promise, or I am going to walk out of this door.”  


__

“How can you do this to me?” she sobbed. “It isn’t fair!”  


__

He gave a bitter laugh. “And your plan _is_?”  


__

She let out a broken little wail and sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around herself and rocking back and forth. He felt his anger melt away as he looked down at her and he found himself dropping down next to her and taking her into his arms.  


__

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “If you won’t live for yourself, Hawke, then live for me until you have your own reasons again. I want you to be alive enough for both of us.”  


__

She nodded, tightening her arms around him. “All right, Varric,” she said in an exhausted, ragged little voice. “I promise.”  


__

He nodded, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “We’ll get through this together, Sweetheart,” he said. “That’s my promise.”  


__

****  


__

Hawke looked down at the parchment in front of her, struggling to put into words what was in her head. It had been about two weeks since her ordeal with Varric and things between them were...strained, to say the least. The first few days she had been furious with him. Furious that he had extorted a promise from her that she didn’t feel that she could keep. He had threatened her with one of the most precious things that she had, his friendship, and it had worked.  


__

But as the days passed, her rage had turned to shame. Because she did have things to live for. Real things that mattered to her, and he was one of them. Yes, she was exhausted and miserable and wracked with guilt, but she knew she was also loved and needed. She knew that she was still alive, that she still had a chance to do good in the world. She was alive and she knew so many people, good people, who weren’t. She had to make things right. She sent a letter down to the Hanged Man with Bodahn.

__

_Dearest Varric,_  


__

_I’m sure you’ve guessed, but I’ve been avoiding you. I was angry at you at first, but now I just feel like shit. I’m sorry for what I put you through. I don’t think I have the words to tell you how ashamed I am. I just...need things between us to be all right. Can we talk tonight?_  


__

_Hawke_

__

He’d sent a response back with Bodahn.

__

_Sweetheart,_  


__

_I’ll be there in an hour._  


__

_Varric_

__

The hour that she spent waiting for him had been one of the longest of her life and by the time Bodahn showed Varric in, she was anxiously pacing in her study. She jumped when the door creaked open. Varric walked in holding a bottle of her favorite dry white wine.  


__

“Varric,” she said softly. “Hi.”  


__

He nodded to her and poured them some wine, gesturing at the couch. She sat next to him and accepted the glass of wine. They were both quiet for a few long moments before Hawke took a deep breath.  


__

“I’m sorry,” she said. “For what I put you through. I...I guess I have been struggling more than I thought. But it was an unfair thing to do to you.”  


__

Varric sighed and set his glass down on the end table and reached for her hands. “I’m sorry for what I said,” he said softly.  


__

She shrugged. “You wanted me to stay,” she replied. She gave a wry smile. “And I have to give you credit, you know how to get what you want with me.”  


__

He flinched and she squeezed his hands. “I’m not sorry for the result,” he said firmly. “But I feel like I let you down, Hawke.”  


__

She blinked at him. “How could you possibly feel that way?” she asked incredulously. “You stopped me from...you know. How is that letting me down?”  


__

“You were hurting,” he said miserably. “And I went on the offensive.” He shook his head, his hands tightening around hers. “I was scared,” he said softly. “So fucking scared, Hawke.” He looked up at her and she could see the terror lurking in his gentle gray eyes still.  


__

“I’m here,” she said, scooting closer to him and wrapping her arms around him. “I won’t leave you, Varric. I promise.”  


__

He hugged her back fiercely. “I’m sorry it’s so hard, Saoirse,” he said quietly. “I know you’re exhausted. I know it feels like you can’t win. But I promise things will be ok eventually.”  


__

She nodded. While she didn’t necessarily believe his words, she knew that he did. “Thank you for fighting for me,” she said, pulling back so that she could look into his eyes.  


__

The expression on his face was fierce as he nodded. “I always will,” he promised.

__

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually a chapter that I cut from The Wolf You Feed because it didn't quite fit. Writing it was important to me, but that wasn't sufficient reason to keep it in the story. This scene was heavily inspired by my own suicide attempt almost 15 years ago and the way my best friend handled it (though he was never as harsh as Varric gets). It's no exaggeration to say that I owe the man my life and I'm fortunate to still call him my best friend today. I hope that anyone who has read this far is not experiencing their own mental health crisis and if you are, please, please, **please** don't be afraid to ask for help. The world needs you. <3 
> 
> Thank you for reading and please be safe and well.


End file.
